Posts Tagged ‘Monaco’

A cereal substitute habit for five rupees, in every flavour, colour and with fatty and sugary toppings.

Five rupees and fifty grammes. That is the most popular price-quantity combination that biscuits in India are made available in. At 100-112 rupees per kilo, the budget biscuits are designed to be the cereal-based substitute for a fresh meal or food that quickly becomes a habit.

To examine what the 5, 10 and more expensive packets of biscuits deliver after quelling your hunger, I bought 27 different biscuit packets that are commonly available in retail shops that you find in metros and towns alike. Parle, Sunfeast and Britannia have several brands each in this price-to-weight category of biscuits.

Weight in grammes, the red marker, on the left scale. Price in rupees, the blue marker, on the right scale. For the 27 common biscuit brands examined.

A packet of biscuits has for the better part of thirty years been a quick and cheap replacement ‘meal’ for many working people in urban India. This is now just as common a practice, if not more so, in rural India (instant noodles is the other alternative). The nutritional impacts of this habit are bound to be considerable – 30 grammes each per day of sugar and fats is the intake for an adult male as suggested by our Indian Council of Medical Research. Many of these brands will in a single packet deliver a third of that daily allowance.